After two wrongful-conviction cases tied to Guevara surfaced in
the last decade, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel hired former US
attorney Scott Lassar and his law firm, Sidley
Austin LLP, to investigate the alleged misconduct in 2013.

Lassar completed his investigation earlier this year, but the
findings may never see the light of day.

A Cook County judge ruled Tuesday the investigation is subject to
attorney-client privilege between Chicago and the law firm and
will therefore remain private, according to BuzzFeed News.

It's a devastating ruling for the people who Guevara helped put
behind bars. Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful
Convictions has reportedly examined
more than 40 convictions Guevara helped secure, and the
investigation could have potentially helped their cases.

It's even more devastating considering the findings of the
report. The sealed report, which
BuzzFeed News obtained, found that four men convicted of
murder were probably innocent. The men — Roberto Almodovar, 40,
Robert Bouto, 39, Jose Montanez, 48, and Armando Serrano, 43 —
have alleged Guevara framed them and are appealing their cases.

“Looking at all the evidence, we conclude that
Montanez and Serrano are more likely than not actually innocent,”
the report stated, according to Buzzfeed News.

On the case of Bouto, the report finds:“[W]e find it more likely than not that someone other than
Robert Bouto shot and killed Salvador Ruvalcaba.”

In the case of Almodovar, investigators said that no
physical evidence links Almodovar to the crime. The key
eyewitness identified Almodovar under “undisputedly challenging
circumstances,” according to the investigation cited by
Buzzfeed.

Chicago
Mayor Rahm Emanuel at a town-hall meeting on the city budget in
Chicago, Illinois, August 31, 2015.REUTERS/Jim Young

Despite the alleged contents of the report, the Cook County
state attorney's office has decided against reopening any of the
four murder cases mentioned in the report.

“We
don’t feel these guys are innocent guys,” Fabio
Valentini,a top prosecutor for Illinois
State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, told The Chicago
Sun-Times.“We haven’t come across
evidence sufficient to show that any of these guys are innocent
of these crimes.”

The report refrains from making a determination of
Guevara's alleged misconduct.

“[W]e cannot conclude whether or not there was misconduct
by the police regarding the alleged confessions. There are too
many possibilities, too many inconsistent facts, and a lack of
credible witnesses,” the report reads.

The "confessions"
the report refers to consist ofa drug addict's now recanted
testimony that he'd heard Serrano, Montanez, and Bouto each
confess to murder.

While the report doesn't make any findings of misconduct on
Guevara's part, Chicago-area residents filed
15 complaints against him between 1982 and 2005,
according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Those complaints claim he
beat and harassed suspects, coerced confessions, and searched
homes without a warrant, according to court records obtained by
the Chicago Sun-Times.

Moreover, in 2001 a gang member
facing life in prison told a federal prosecutor— in
the hopes of reducing his sentence — said that Guevara was taking
bribes in murder cases to either let off suspects or frame them,
according to the Sun-Times.

Inmates
are processed at the Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois, May
20, 2014.Reuters/Jim
Young

There have been documented problems with murder cases that
Guevara investigated.

David Protess, the director of the Medill Innocence
Project, has condemned Guevara.

"He would do whatever was necessary to take
people he believed were criminals off the street," Protess told
the Chicago Tribune. "It's clear that there was a pattern and
practice by Area 5 police officers to recruit snitches to falsely
testify against innocent men, and Ray Guevara was at the heart of
it."

Guevara has refused to answer questions during
court depositions, citing the Fifth Amendment.